Life after Charlie Hustle

The ex-Mrs. Pete Rose spins yarns on Pete, family and life

Jan. 22, 2012

Loading Photo Galleries ...

Written by

Karolyn Rose once was married to the most famous athlete in Cincinnati history. The original Mrs. Pete Rose was unabashedly loud, proud and a celebrity in her own right.

After many years in the spotlight, Karolyn began keeping a lower profile after she divorced Pete in 1980. Tired of her husband’s womanizing and inattention to his family, Karolyn threw herself even deeper into the lives of her beloved children, Fawn and Pete Jr.

Karolyn watched mostly in silence – at least publicly – as Pete Sr. remarried, had two more children, became baseball’s Hit King (1985) and then was banned from baseball for gambling (1989).

One of Karolyn’s last truly public appearances was in 1997 at old Riverfront Stadium/Cinergy Field, when Pete Jr. was called up to the Reds and played briefly for the team.

Now, with her 70th birthday approaching (March 14), The Enquirer sought to catch up with Karolyn at her West Side home. Her formerly dark hair is now blonde – yes, that Facebook photo is a much younger Karolyn.

“How are you going to dress up a 70-year-old woman, hon?” she said, then laughs.

She admittedly looks much different than the Big Red Machine years, when she essentially was the First Lady of Cincinnati baseball and leader of the Reds’ wives.

Karolyn remains sassy, brassy and opinionated. She says she is far from perfect. But close friends and even casual acquaintances have always been taken by her kind-hearted, down-to-earth nature.

Who was it that took care of the new Reds wives? Who knew where all the child care, doctors and dentists were in Cincinnati? Who took charge of the wives’ hotel rooms and airline tickets for road trips? Who knew almost as many baseball people as Pete did?

Karolyn.

Now, after being out of the limelight for some years, Karolyn embraces the chance to tell the world anew about her life as a mother and grandmother … and “soul mate” to a special beau who has been in her life for nearly two decades.

This past week Karolyn welcomed a visiting reporter and photographer into her home. She then talked, essentially nonstop, for nearly 90 minutes. Aside from occasional interjections by her visitors, it was freewheeling, all-Karolyn, all-the-time.

Rocking back and forth in an easy chair, big-screen TV turned off and her knitting sitting alongside, the phone occasionally ringing and the clock chiming every half-hour, Karolyn speaks in her familiar loud, booming voice.

She occasionally springs to the edge of her seat, gesturing and voice rising when making a point. From Pete to her children to the Reds’ wives, to the days when she was a radio talk show host and a pro wrestling referee, to the time when singer Tony Bennett sent her flowers for her birthday, to the time she mistakenly got on the players’ bus to the All-Star Game, no topic is off limits.

She is well aware that it is just a few days from what would have been her 48th wedding anniversary with Pete. Karolyn Engelhardt became Mrs. Pete Rose on Jan. 25, 1964, about six months after the Cincinnati kids were introduced by a friend at River Downs racetrack.

This is Karolyn Rose, on the brink of 70.

Surrounded by pictures of her four granchildren, Karolyn gleefully starts with that.

Karolyn’s daughter Fawn, 47, has 5-year-old twins – a girl and a boy, Eden and Jude – lives in Seattle and also works occasionally in California. Karolyn’s son Pete Jr., 42, who lives offseasons in Cincinnati and manages a Chicago White Sox rookie league team, has a 7-year-old boy (Peter Edward “P.J.” Rose III) and a 5-year-old girl (Isabella).

“There’s P.J. and there’s Bella , and there’s the twins … they (Fawn’s kids) speak Spanish! And some Italian. Thank God for computers, I can Skype …

“You know, it’s been a long time, hasn’t it? I think I’ve mellowed, if you can believe that. I have a fiance. … Yes! I’ve been with him 20 years, and any day I’m going to say yes. He’s a good guy. He was Petey’s coach for Tyra Trucking. His name is Bill Tyra.”

Back to Pete and the kids.

“My life was always around my kids. I was a mother and a father, let’s face it. I stop and think if I didn’t have my kids, I don’t think I would have been the woman I am today.

“I don’t feel like I’m 70. I had a knee replacement in ’07, and it still bothers me, the left one. And now my back, my fourth and fifth vertebrae shifts on my sciatic nerve so I can’t stand long, so they got me a scooter. I go to Meijer’s, Kroger’s, Wal-Mart and Sam’s because they have scooters. And Jo-Ann’s Fabric. Life can’t get any better.”

Back when, Karolyn would drive her Rolls Royce anywhere and everywhere, including the McDonald’s drive-through with her kids and their friends.

“They used to laugh at me, because at one time I had a Rolls Royce and I would go to K-Mart. The girls used to laugh because I would go in, and they would holler, ‘Here comes Karolyn! Get the blue light special going!’ ”

Back to Pete again.

“I married Pete on January 25th, 1964, at St. William’s. Monsignor Sherry. When I got married, I always thought it was for good.”

The Catholic wedding ceremony includes a Mass and can last more than an hour. That was too long for impatient, non-Catholic Pete Rose.

“I’ll never forget it because I can still hear Pete saying, ‘Well, are we married yet?’ Because he wasn’t Catholic. Monsignor Sherry said, ‘Pete, I’ll tell you when you’re married, OK?’ Oh my God, I thought. What a goofball Pete is!

“Now, Pete could have been anything he wanted in Cincinnati. He had the bull by the tail. He could have been mayor. He could have been manager of the Reds the rest of his life. You wonder why, but my kids were away from that (gambling scandal). When all that came around, I was divorced. The best thing was that my kids didn’t have to put up with it as much. I guess God has a plan for everything.

“I always said that if Pete ever made the Hall of Fame (he is ineligible), my children naturally will be there. I expect them to be there, and I would probably be up in a tree (mimics being in a tree, looking down). I’d just be looking.”

Karolyn said she has not spoken to Pete Sr. since their son’s wedding, nearly two decades ago.

“That’s the way it’s been,” she said. “My son has been married 17 years, and Pete came to the wedding. I was in the church down at St. Xavier and he walked up and said, ‘Hello … um, hi.’ That was the extent of it.”

(Question: Have you ever forgiven him?)

“Forgive him? (Pause). I never hated anyone, that’s not the way I work. I don’t care who it was that did something to me. Maybe I should have hated Pete, but no. I have to say that I forgive him.”

In 2011, Pete Sr. filed for divorce from his second wife, Carol Woliung.

“Look at him now. It’s a shame because now he’s divorcing this wife. This woman, I feel sorry for her. Me, I’m saying I feel sorry for her. But I still say what comes around goes around. I believe that. I absolutely believe it. I mean, it might take 20 years like it has, but what comes around goes around.”

Baseball stories. Karolyn naturally has several zillion. From getting on the wrong buses to ballparks, to sneaking a flask of adult drink into the 1972 World Series in Oakland Coliseum, to scoping out the visiting bleachers to see what fans might throw at Pete – then an outfielder – to continually having young Pete Jr. wander off aimlessly inside Riverfront Stadium.

“Now, did you ever watch this Baseball Wives TV show now? It’s a joke, because these women don’t know what it was like back then. We had togetherness, and that’s why we won (World Series titles) in ’75 and ’76 because everybody got together. There was no fighting.”

Well, maybe some fighting. Karolyn got along with most but not every Reds wife. There was one relative newcomer who took exception to Karolyn’s constantly ringing a cowbell at the ’75 World Series games in Boston.

“This girl said, ‘Stop ringing the bell because I have a headache,’ ” Karolyn said. “And I kept ringing it. Woo-hoo, woo-hoo! And I said if you don’t like it, you can hit the pavement, we don’t care. This is what we girls do because we want to win a World Series.

“I was always getting on the wrong bus, too. In ’69 the All-Star Game was in Washington, (D.C.), and I was pregnant with Petey. Don’t you know I got on the wrong bus, the players’ bus from the hotel. And their mouths are running with that (bad) language, you know how players talk.

“I’m in the back, and finally Rusty Staub (then with the Montreal Expos) looked and said, ‘Karolyn, what are you doing here!’ I said I don’t know. So they put a shirt over me. They say don’t worry about it, you’re all right.

“Pete always sat up front, and I was in the back. One of them ratted on me. Hey Pete, did you know your wife is in the back? Oh my! Pete was one of those that the girls ain’t supposed to be with the boys, you know? I was always getting in trouble.”

Back to Pete again, and the womanizing that helped destroy their marriage.

“I didn’t divorce Pete because I didn’t love him. I divorced Pete because I didn’t want my kids to say, ‘I guess we could (cheat on a spouse), Dad did it.’ There are some things that I’m bitter about. I was more upset with Pete bringing (then-girlfriend) Carol around my kids. Then he gets upset with Petey because they’re at the racetrack and Petey won’t walk with his girlfriend. Those kinds of things.

“I might sound bitter, but I’m only bitter with Pete the way he could have done better to his kids … because I talk to the other wives and how good the husbands were to their kids. Like Gloria Morgan. She said Joe was good to their kids. …

“(Pete) is better to his second family’s kids than he was to his own kids. And my kids never asked him for anything.”

Pete Rose, who will turn 71 in April, still cannot go places without being recognized. Karolyn, for her part, can go out in public and not be bothered. That was not the case in her Mrs. Pete Rose days, when Karolyn was recognized most everywhere she went in Cincinnati.

“If they asked me, I would still go and have a television show,” she said. “I could sit in a chair just like this. I was on Ruth Lyons and Paul Dixon (iconic local Cincinnati TV shows). I was on the radio. I was the first woman sportscaster, you know.”

Karolyn had her own radio show on the old WNOP-AM (740). She did some announcing at local hockey games. In more recent years she worked as a bartender at a popular West Side nightspot and at a job arranging weddings and banquets. She also has knitted scarves for the homeless. She never lacks for something to do.

She gets out some old photo albums. There are some shots of when she was a celebrity referee at a professional wrestling event in Cincinnati.

“Look, there’s Bobo Brazil and The Sheik.”

Karolyn said The Sheik, in fact, caused a ruckus that night by scraping his opponent with a foreign object. Or so it appeared. Blood spattered onto Karolyn’s pants.

Karolyn then flips to a photo of herself and fellow Reds baseball wives Jolene Billingham, Pituka Perez and Carol Nolan at a 1976 World Series game in New York. Karolyn appears to be yelling.

“There I am,” Karolyn said, “with my mouth open, as usual.”

The one time Karolyn gets choked up is when she’s asked what, on the surface, seems a fairly basic question:

“When was the last time you were at a Reds game?”

Answer: 1997, when Pete Jr. got called up to the Reds. And here her voice quavers, a tear wells up, and Karolyn reaches for a tissue.

“I haven’t been back since Petey played, and it was hard for me to go then,” she said. “Walking into the stadium and seeing a lot of my friends … (pauses, wiping a tear) … It was my life.”

She vividly recalls the day (Sept. 1, 1997) when Pete Jr. made his major league debut. He went 1-for-3.

“I do get choked up,” she said. “I was hurt when Pete (Sr.) came in and they gave him seats right by the dugout, I think, and my tickets were somewhere else. And I’ll never forget, and I love him to death to this day, Marty Brennaman gave me his four seats that he had for that game.”

Karolyn also has a bone to pick with a former Reds manager, and it’s not Pete Rose.

“I think that Jack McKeon did the number on Petey, because he wasn’t the one that told them to bring him up,” Karolyn said.

McKeon was Reds manager at the time Pete Jr. was brought up. McKeon did not play Pete Jr. much, and Pete Jr. was back in the minors for good thereafter. It was no secret that Pete Jr. was not rated a top-flight major league prospect, but still …

“I’ll never forgive Jack McKeon. I don’t hate him, but I have no respect for him. I want to tell you something, I will write a book and I will put in it why I feel my son got snowed because of Jack McKeon.”

How does Karolyn Rose describe herself today? The perception for years, among some outsiders, was that she must be lonely. What a terrible thing Pete did to her and those kids. She must be pining for Pete, missing him and her former life.

While there was some of that, time truly has healed some of the hurt. The good times, the World Series titles and the fun and the fame, that will always stay with her, too.

“Pete was fun to be around,” she said. “At first he was so much fun and so nice to me. I remember I didn’t even know who he was when we were first introduced. He couldn’t believe it. He was already on the Reds at the time. I didn’t know anything about baseball then.”

Now it is nearly 50 years since Pete Rose entered her life. It is also more than 30 years since Pete Rose officially left her life.

“I’m still a happy person,” she said. “I think I’m content. I’ve gotten shorter. I’ve gotten heavier. I’m a little butterball. But I’m happy to the standpoint that I don’t have to worry where my husband is.”

The interview is nearly done. Almost on cue, Karolyn’s friend Bill Tyra pulls into her driveway.

“This is Billy,” Karolyn says, with introductions all around. “He’s a good man. He’s a few years younger than me, but you can’t tell, right? Somebody told me the other day I don’t look 70, that I look like I’m in my 50s. That made my day.”

A few minutes later, Karolyn wraps things up with her departing visitors.

“Now, write a good story. I know you will. Tell everyone my life is good. Life is wonderful to me. I don’t think I could be any happier.”